This is possible the dumbest statement ever uttered by a medical student ever:
During second year, we were having a small group session on the liver. At the end of the session, one of my classmates raised her hand:
Her: "Isn't it true that liver transplants aren't that hard to get because people have two livers?"
Attending: [stares at her] ".... Do you mean.... kidneys?"
Her: "Oh. Haha... yeah."
I don't think anyone in that room will ever forget that one.
That's a little scary, too.
ReplyDeleteI've heard of a student who made it to second year before figuring out that muscle was meat. She thought that the 'human meat' had been removed in the anatomy diagrams and prosections to make it easier. I really hope that this is grossly exaggerated, though.
ReplyDeleteI hope this can be chalked up to sleep deprivation and not utter stupidity. I mean, I'm a professional musician who was a liberal arts major and even I know that livers are hard to get because people don't like liver.
ReplyDeleteFizzy, I really can't believe how mean you are to medical students. I would have hated to work with a resident like you who is SOOOOOO judgmental.
ReplyDelete(Just kidding. That was a really dumb thing to say.)
It must have been sleep deprivation or maybe the student wasn't born here and had ESL as a kid.
ReplyDeleteA tutor told me about the horrifying results of a recent survey of final year med students (here in Australia, I'm ashamed to admit): that when asked to palpate the head of fibula, the majority tried to do this on the medial aspect of the knee...
ReplyDeleteThe ER residents around here frequently tell me the patient has a fracture of the head of the fibula and I get down there to find the patient has a distal fibular fracture.
DeleteWhere is this student now? Hopefully not somewhere pioneering in transplant surgery. Donors don't do well when you take the right-sided liver out.
ReplyDeleteReceipients do even worse when you give them the left-sided liver.
ReplyDeleteDuring a GP placement midway through my medical degree, I once found myself unable to remember the name of the... well, fibula. Not my best moment! "Oh, haha... Yeah" indeed!
ReplyDeleteYou guys are mean. She could have been confused because we keep hearing about "lobes" of the liver, and you only donate a certain part of the liver as a living related donor. It's still a very complicated operation, but it's certainly doable.
ReplyDeleteAnd I can never remember the tibia/fibula bones. They were never important in neurology. As an ER doctor or an arthopedic surgeon, sure.
How many of you can name all the cranial nerves? And test them?
Yeah, but then how come when the attending asked her if she meant the kidneys, she said yea?
Delete*orthopedic
ReplyDelete(I have no idea how the a got in there...)
I know I am late to the party here, but a fellow student asked if an EVD could be hooked to wall suction.
ReplyDelete